Hashima Hasan Portrait

“I was born in India soon after we got independence from the British. So we were just beginning to get access to education. My mother was very keen that her daughters get an education. She was a big motivating force behind my interest in science. Since I was really little, she would say, ‘This daughter of mine is going to be a scientist.’ “And I loved nature. In those days, the monsoon would make India come to life with flowers and creepy-crawlies and all kinds of little creatures. I would just go out, eagerly looking for new forms of life. I was always curious. And I remember the night sky — just trying to count all the stars. We didn’t have electricity so it was very dark. You could see the Milky Way, it was so clear. “When Sputnik was launched, it came out in the newspaper that you would be able to see it pass overhead at 5 in the morning. And my grandmother woke up everyone — the entire household — to see it. There was a big crowd in the backyard to watch Sputnik go by. "Then, Yuri Gagarin made a tour of India. He came to our city — Lucknow — and there was a reception for him. My mother got invitations for all of us to see the cosmonaut. We were just little kids. We ran right to the stage — there was no security then — and said hello to him. He gave us little booklets and autographs. It was a big inspiration for me. I remember just staring at that booklet he gave me. I kept it for years.” NASA Program Scientist, Dr. Hashima Hasan, poses for a portrait in her backyard, while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Monday, July 6, 2020 in Maryland. Hasan currently works at NASA Headquarters as a program scientist on the agency’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft, the Keck Observatory, and the NASA Astrophysics Archives, and is the deputy program scientist for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)